Victorious Values For the 90s VI, Unity of the Spirit

Just a little word of encouragement while you're turning there. We've been getting into a habit of kind of getting up and going out and moving around, and many people comment how distracting that is. If you need to get up and go out, this would be a great time to sit in the back so you can just slip out the back door. Otherwise, you can't move. We're not going to let you move. We've got row monitors now. So get ready. You're going to get tripped when you head out the aisle. All right, before we turn to Acts 11, I want to set sort of a backdrop for the message this morning. Today's theme is on unity. Scott asked me, he said, have you changed the series? No. Unity is a tremendously important value for the 90s. It's just not one that we normally would think about. This last week, I was reading through the Scriptures, as many of you are, in the Victory Bible Plan, and I was stopped cold in Matthew 12. And I'd like the gals to flash this up on the overhead, please. Read with me, won't you, Matthew 12. Read it with me out loud. By the way, before we start, what had happened here was Jesus had just delivered a demon-possessed man and had set him free, and he could suddenly talk and see, which he hadn't been able to do, and the Pharisees and scribes were saying, wait a minute. You're able to drive out demons because you're in league with Satan, Beelzebub. Remember that story? You do it by that power. Here's what Jesus said. Now read it with me. Ready? Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined. How many kingdoms? Every. And every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he's divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. These powerful words began to penetrate my spirit because Jesus said, Every kingdom, every city, even every household. How many of you are part of a household? That's divided against itself will not stand. In fact, Jesus said, will be ruined. That's a very powerful picture. By that scripture, you see, unity takes on a whole new importance to me. And I hope it does to you as well. I want to use the word I don't use very often here. This is the R word. I believe this is a revelation. And some of you who are struggling in marriages and struggling in jobs and struggling in vision for your life, need to listen especially carefully today because it may not be at all what you think the problem is. It may be very much a matter of unity. Every project, every company, every church, every nation, the Bible says will be ruined if there's not unity. The secret to strength and achievement, on the other hand, is unity. And I started to look around and think, what evidence is there that division has caused strife and destruction? I don't know. You have to look very far to see it. Question for you, why do you think Ross Perot withdrew? No one really knows for sure. They're all saying this kind of thing. I know very clearly from what I heard that there certainly wasn't unity in his ranks. On the other hand, if you watch the Democratic National Convention this week on television, what were they trying to tell the nation? What were they trying to say? Oh, yeah, we're family now. Oh, we really care about each other. We have this one purpose. We're in unity. Even to the point where Bill Clinton is saying things like, you know, this nation needs to be unified. We need to get things like abortion out of the way and just get on. Well, Mr. Clinton, it's a little more difficult than just getting it out of the way. I agree we need unity, but we need unity in truth. In every place, Jesus says, where there is division, destruction will soon follow. It's true in homes. Young people, you talk about marrying an unbeliever, you want a surefire prescription for destruction, be in disunity with your potential spouse about spiritual matters. How does this affect us here at North Way? Well, over the last several weeks, we've been looking at personal expressions of values and virtues for the 90s, vision and courage and endurance and so on. I want to look at this matter of unity as it relates to North Way, and I could have very easily done it as it relates to your personal life. You know, the Bible says many, many times that a man whose heart's divided can receive nothing from God. Psalm 3611 says, you know, an undivided heart is pleasing to the Lord. But what about our corporate life? Well, six weeks ago, as Alan Muckle mentioned in his testimony, we had a word from the Lord through one of his messengers about North Way being like the church at Antioch. Now, if you haven't read The Observer, we have multiple locations where you can pick up hundreds of copies. I don't want to have any of those left here by the end of July, okay? But in it, the prophecy, at least one of the Knights of Prophecy, about North Way was completely transcribed. And to me, one of the most important things that was said in there was that North Way would be like the church at Antioch. And why that was important to me was, it's a message we've heard here from other men of God at other times. Like the church at Antioch. Now, I don't know if you understand fully what the church at Antioch was like, so I did a little bit of background study on this. And I think it's very, very important that we understand this vision, because if it's from the Lord, we better be in agreement about it, or else, Jesus said, we're not going to make it. We're going to be divided, and we're going to end up being destroyed in our vision. Now, the church at Antioch was an unusual place. The church at Antioch, by the way, the city was the third largest city in the world of its day. Rome was the largest, Alexandria and Syria was the second largest, and Antioch was the third largest city in the world, when Paris and London were just little birds. Antioch was a major city. And it was there that after 30 years of Christianity being stuck in Jerusalem, 30 years of being stuck in Jerusalem, God began to break out the gospel, and Antioch became the pivotal church. From this point on in the book of Acts, Christianity spreads like wildfire. Up until this point, it was real slow going, folks. The gospel you see in Jerusalem was focused primarily on what group of people? The Jews. And therefore, everything that had to do with the gospel was being interpreted in Jewish terms. The temple worship and the prohibitions about what to eat and what to drink and all that kind of stuff. Finally, the Lord said, enough of this stuff, and He used persecution to drive people into Antioch. Let's read about what happened. Acts 11. Are you there now? You say, I've been there for 15 minutes, Jay. Why don't you read? Acts 11. Verse 19. Now those who had been scattered by the persecution, in connection with Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went on to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks, also telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. And the Lord's hand was with them. Everyone say, the Lord's hand was with them. The Lord's hand was with them. If you want to be a success in anything you do, have that be said about your life. And a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the ears of the church of Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. And when he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad, and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Verse 25. And then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them named Agabus stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. This happened during the reign of Claudius. The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. And so here at the church at Antioch, some different kinds of things began to take place. And I want to share with you five marks of unity of the church at Antioch that I want to just suggest today. We pray that God allow to be here in our church. And by the way, normally at this time of year, I go away for an extended period of what I call the study break with the elders blessing. I usually go for about a month and I just get before the Lord and read a lot and listen a lot. This year, the Lord just did not give me the green light to do that. So I usually have a sort of a message to kind of end the first six months of ministry. I'm not doing that, but today I'm going to touch on some things that I believe you need to understand about who we are and where we're going. Unity. First thing I see here is unity in diversity. If you're taking notes, this is in your outline. If you're not taking notes, smile real big. Unity in diversity. Antioch became the first truly cross-cultural church in the New Testament. There they first broke the back of prejudice. Now, how do we know that? Well, flip over one page to Acts 13. I hope you have your Bibles because you'll be lost, but Acts 13. Look what it says. In the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. Those names probably don't mean a whole lot to you. Can I tell you who those people were? Barnabas was sort of the senior citizen of the believers. He'd known the Lord for a long time, came from the church of Jerusalem. Lucius was a black man from North Africa. Manaan was a rich man who had served in Saul's court, Herod's court, rather. Simeon was a rich man who laid down his wealth for the sake of the gospel. So he was a man of incredible character. And Saul, of course, was a Jew. Think about the description now that I've just painted for you. Here was a picture of a group of people that were very unique and very different and very cross-cultural. And one of the secrets to the explosion of life at Antioch was that this church had overcome the tiny smallness of mind that prejudice and racism bring into a congregation and will always be a stumbling block to the things of God. Dear ones, listen carefully. How many of you believe that God is colorblind? I hope your hand's up. I hope you don't think God just, well, He favors one race above another. In fact, Galatians 3.28 says that God doesn't even see male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free. He doesn't see any of those distinctions. But, how many of you here today would be honest enough to say without raising your hand that you struggle with some degree of prejudice toward other races and other ethnic groups? Folks, if the L.A. riots told us anything, they told us that racism and prejudice is alive and well in the United States of America. But a church who cares enough to confront that attitude in themselves will begin to be able to live out a demonstration of the kind of life where racism and prejudice can be overcome. The church at Antioch was that kind of church, and I want to submit to you, we need to be setting ourselves to become that kind of church right here. Folks, I have to say to you, I feel that the church, this church, has an incredible opportunity right now. You know, the whole nation is kind of aware and alert once again to the depths of the animosity that lie between races. And North Way is no doubt, by anyone's standard, a fairly monochromatic church. But there are some folks from some other races, some other minorities that are beginning to attend here, and some faithfully and regularly. And we need to come to grips, we really do, with what our attitude is about people who are different from us. You see, how many believe the government is going to figure this out? They're going to come up with a program now that we're all really going to like each other. I mean, there's so much deceit and so much manipulation going on. I don't care how much money they throw at it, I don't care who gets elected, it's not going to make any difference, is it? Because you see, the kind of thing we're talking about only happens when the hearts of people have been touched to the place where pride is laid down and love is extended. I mean, it is so convoluted out there. You know, Newsweek magazine a few weeks ago, Sister Soulja on the cover, rap songs that are calling for murder. I don't understand. I don't understand how the media plays on this, do you? I mean, the forces out there are so deceiving and so imbalanced and so dichotomous, it just doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, can you imagine if David Duke had gone in to Time Warner and said, you know, I'd like to do a rap song about killing black people. What do you think they'd have said? Oh, great idea. I mean, there'd have been this tremendous uproar. Right? But you know what the problem is mostly with us here at North Way? It's not that concern, it's more the other. I believe that most of us who are white people in this church, we're ignorant of our racism. We don't even realize sometimes how subtly it comes out. I had a wonderful conversation with a black family here in our church. They were real honest. They said, you know, we love coming here. But more times than I'd like to tell you, I get the messages from people that, well, just keep your distance. You know, time for prayer circles and personal turnaround and just kind of go like this, you know. Just subtle little things, but boy, what a message. And you know what I said to them? I said, well, you know, thanks for having the courage just to hang in there and helping us to confront who we are. Because, folks, listen, if we don't confront it, it just isn't going to get better. And there aren't a lot of minority races out here in this part of the city. I know that. But by God's grace, in the coming years, I believe we're going to be more wide open than we've ever been, and I believe God's going to add to us. You know, I trust when you see a minority family of any race come to visit the church, you don't just hope that someone else like them will find them. I mean, let's be open-hearted. Let's be embracive. Because if we're going to talk about love and unity, and we're going to talk about healing and restoration and reconciliation, we better well be demonstrating it right here. I mean, is it quiet because you all agree, or is it quiet because you don't agree? We need to be alert to this. It's very, very important. You see, if we're going to be like the church at Antioch, and that's what the prophetic word said, we better start right there. And if I could say this, part of the church being prophetic in the culture is a sensitivity in this area. Because I believe when we get to heaven, how many of you think there's going to be a Korean church? And there's going to be an African-American church? And there's going to be a Chinese church? No way. What's there going to be? One church. And who's going to be there? People of every different race and color and ethnic background, and we're going to be one. Might as well start right here. Amen? Now, that's easy for me to say, and it's easy for you to nod. It's another whole thing when it gets right down to where you live. I just want to leave that with you this morning. Have the courage to ask God to examine your heart and show you that. Unity in our diversity. Second thing I see here, the church at Antioch had unity in purpose, or unity of purpose. Look at verses 21, 24, and 26. There it says in Acts 11, that a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. The church at Antioch had overcome that pervasive mindset that settles into church people that small is safe. I like small better than big. We all have a tendency to want to control things to be a size that we're really comfortable with. This church enjoyed a sense of unity of purpose, and that purpose was to spread the gospel. They were into spreading the good news, and the Bible says, if you catch it, a great number, verse 21, verse 24, a great number, verse 26, a great number of people. Let me say, listen carefully, this is a big issue, folks. I don't know how many people say to me from time to time, oh, you know, it's too big. I don't know very many people. Our Saturday night service, a lot of people say, I come Saturday night because it's smaller. I always say to them, what happens if God starts blessing Saturday night and it gets bigger? Are you going to stop coming? We have to be looking for God to unite us. What is our purpose here? Our purpose isn't our purpose to extend the kingdom of God, to make disciples of all nations. That's what we're supposed to do. And so if God chooses to send us numbers of people, we need to be open-heartedly embracing of them. And we need to say, okay, Lord, then it isn't so much a matter of numbers, it's a matter of how big is my heart. You know, Ken and Lisa Starkey are working with a billion Chinese. What if they said, well, you know what, I'm not real comfortable with more than 30 or 40 in my church here. Will we ever get to a billion? And by the way, do you think God's impressed if there's 1,000 or 1,500 or 2,000 people here at this church? I don't think God looks at them, wow, that's impressive. He's not impressed in the least. Neither is He concerned about it. It doesn't make Him nervous. He doesn't say, oh, Holy Spirit, you better be on your toes. There's a lot of people down there today. He looks at the size of our heart. How many of you have a heart that's big enough to embrace a lot of people? You say, well, yeah, but Jay, you don't know. It's so difficult to feel part of things. I've discovered something. I feel part of things whether it's a small group or a large group as long as I'm fitted in somewhere. That's all it takes. And by the way, if we had 100 people, you couldn't know them all. So you might as well just get to know some that are around you and trust that over time God will let your relationship spread out and enjoy it. Folks, I love the fact that we have so many wonderful, diverse, creative kinds of people throughout our body. Let's celebrate that and not just get hung up on being small because we think it's safer that way. By the way, in light of this whole finding a group, let's put up that mission statement. Would you please? I caught you red-handed. I said, got to be ready. Real quick. Here's our fall mission statement. To empower God's people for effective ministry through community groups. Everyone say, through community groups. Through community groups. Are you in one? I have some real big yeses and some real big noes and some real big ayes. Like, oh, what does that mean? Come fall, you're going to be challenged and invited to participate in some expression of a community group. And we'll talk a lot more about that. Be unified in purpose. Number three, unity with other believers. Very quickly, all I want to say here is, the church at Antioch received Barnabas as a friend. Now keep in mind, Barnabas came from what city? Jerusalem. How was the church of Jerusalem doing? Pretty well. But were they doing as well as the church at Antioch? No way. The church at Antioch could have said, you know, Barnabas, hey, let us alone, we're doing great. Go back up there to headquarters, we're doing fine. Instead, they embraced him. Do you see that? They were happy to be connected. Now listen very carefully. We are not part of a denomination. I'm not proud of that. I don't think that's necessarily more godly than someone who is part of a denomination. However, I do think it is imperative that we remain connected organically with other believers and other bodies of believers. That's why Wednesday night, Dan Lashage from North Park Church could come and worship with us and share in our service. That's why I meet regularly with a group of other pastors from around the city. And that's why I'm part of what's called the New Pittsburgh Offensive, which is a group of seven churches along with Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation that's working together to touch this city for Christ. In two weeks, two weeks from today, Reid Carpenter will be here to preach and share the vision from his perspective about how North Way fits in with God's vision to reach Pittsburgh. I want to say to you, please never think that because you come to this church, you don't need anybody else. We need to be connected. We need to be open and embracing. Amen? Very important. In unity with other believers. Number four, there is unity of the Spirit. Look at verse 23. It says, When Barnabas arrived, he saw the grace of God. Now, that's a beautiful word, the grace of God. What does grace mean, by the way? What's it basically mean? Yeah, you remember Sunday school days? God's riches at Christ's expense. But Barnabas didn't see a doctrine here. He didn't say, Oh, you're great. He saw the grace of God, the word in the Greek, if we could put that up Kelly, means charis. Or that's the Greek word rather, from which we get the word charismatic. What he saw was the power of God at work to do the will of God. He saw the grace, the power of God working. He saw it in the openness of the people to the work of the Holy Spirit. You see, the church at Antioch was comfortably open to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Barnabas came and saw this. It tells us down in verse 28, a prophet stood up and brought a prophetic word. Over in Acts 13 verse 1, the whole missionary movement of the New Testament started with a prophetic word from the Lord to send out Barnabas and Saul. Dear ones, let me say something very important right now. Tune back in, listen up. We have to work in this church to remain open to what the Holy Spirit wants to do here. Because my inclination is just like yours. It's easy just to kind of retreat to our comfort zone, to play it safe, to shut down the movement of the Spirit because every place I've ever been, when the Spirit begins to move, it gets messy. And it's easier just to say, well, I don't need that anymore. Not out of rebellion, but more out of just ignorance and kind of fear. But when that happens, it also shuts down the options by which God might speak to us and liberate us. It's my conviction, it's my conviction that God wants to break through in many of our lives, in home groups, in small group settings, in discipleship groups, as well as in the services, and just speak a word from the Lord. I mean, the testimony today, by the way, wonderfully timed, but not my timing. Alan shows up at my house yesterday and says, I've got to share this, not knowing that I was going to be talking about prophetic word. You see, in his life, a prophetic word broke through something that had been about a two-year struggle. And others of you could raise your hand and say the same thing. Let me say something about why this is important. You see, there's a lot of diversity of opinion out here about things like this. And someone will come in and they'll be a little bit different. And folks, I've never met a prophet who's normal. They're all just a little different. And there was such a range of opinions about the prophetic ministry of six or seven weeks ago. I mean, some people said, oh, he was weird. He was strutting on stage and talking funny and all that. I didn't like him. Other people said, oh, that was so good. I so needed. I mean, I've got letters piled up both sides of the opinion. And you see, can we just understand something? I mean, we have the whole spectrum in this church, from A to Z. And for some, you know, we're way, way too conservative. We need more people like Emmanuel to strut along here and speak the word of the Lord. Other people say, oh, man, I haven't met one like that and I'm leaving. Well, I have to say, somewhere in between those two options, folks, there is a balance to walk in where we're open to all that God wants to say, but we're also wise in judging the words of the Lord and not just flipping out and doing crazy things. Amen? So we need that openness, that unity of the Spirit so that we can hear from God and move together in one accord. Finally, the church at Antioch was a great church because there was a unity of the release of ministry. Verse 25 and 26 says that Barnabas went out and found Saul and brought him back. And anytime you get serious about releasing ministry, folks, you take a risk. Why was Saul in Tarsus? Does anyone know? I'll suggest this. He was there because the Jews in Jerusalem couldn't figure him out. So they said, why don't you go over there and just be with God for a while and we'll decide what to do with you. Well, Barnabas seized the opportunity when he got him, brought him back to Antioch and said, you teach the people. How would you like to sit under Barnabas and Paul for a year for teaching, okay? You see, and I believe that what God wants in our church is a unity of expectation that ministry will be released through the people of God. I believe the Lord wants that. He wants people rising up, moving out, expressing ministry in ways that He's gifted them to do so. The attitude I want to see is embracing and releasing, embracing and releasing, embracing and releasing. If the prophetic words to be fulfilled, healing teams, deliverance teams, ministering teams are going to be sent out from the church. How many of you remember the Lord said that young people are going to go out in teams to touch other lives? And notice what happens. When this word came, look at verse 28. The Holy Spirit said through Agabus, a famine was coming. And look what it says in verse 29. The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. In verse 30, this they did. Everyone say that. This they did. When the Lord speaks, I trust you'll be a person of whom it will be said, this they did. It isn't going to matter. Everyone can walk up here and prophesy or preach or share. And if all you do is sit and say, oh, I'll give it a 6.3. Nothing's going to happen. No release, no blessing. But when you hear the word of the Lord and you admit your faith and then you obey what the Lord says and this they did can be said of you, something's going to happen. Something's going to happen. That's true of every sermon. That's true of every message of teaching. If you respond with faith and you say, this they did. Lord, I'm going to do something. God will be free to move powerfully. Let me end with this. The Bible says that at Antioch, believers were first called Christians. What does the word Christian mean? Scott, our whole series this summer was about that. Little Christ's or little anointed ones. I'm going to believe that was a term of endearment, a statement of appreciation. No way. No way. The disciples were called Christians because the culture looked at them and said, you're weird. You're not like us. You know what a good 90's translation would be? Jesus freak. Now, I'm not advocating being a freak for its own sake, but I am saying this. A church that's moving in unity, a church that's unified in its diversity and in its openness to the Holy Spirit, in its common purpose together, a church that's moving after God will be different than its culture. Very frequently people will say to me, oh, you pastor that kind of weird church, or that's a little different up there, or those people are a little strange. Part of me says, no, I don't want to hear that. But part of me says, God, never let it be said. Never let it be said. Oh, that's the church where everyone's normal and they're all like me. How many of you believe it's time that we live our Christian lives on such an edge that we fulfill what God says? We are aliens and strangers. This is not our home. Heaven is my citizenship. That's where I belong. And if that means I'm just a little bit weird to the culture, then so be it. I don't know about you, but I don't want to blend into this culture. I don't want my love to be the same as theirs and my tolerance and my openness. I want to be different than the culture around me. And I want to move in unity with you. Because if we do, the other side of unity is that when you move together, nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible. And so my exhortation to you as I end this message is, let's be a church that's unified. Let's put those five things up. Unified in all five of these ways as we move into the second half of this year. Unified in diversity. Unified in purpose. Unified with other believers. Unified in openness to the Holy Spirit. And unified in releasing ministry through others. And dear ones, I want you to know something. Our best years are just ahead of us. Our best years. If we're unified together, God is going to amaze us with His grace. Let's stand and pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this opportunity to share my heart and my burden with this congregation. And Lord, right now, I just pray that any obstacle to unity, Lord, that you put your finger on it. Listen carefully, church, to the Holy Spirit. Go ahead. What's He saying to you? Where have you allowed division?